5-Pleasant

Earlier this year Ferrero announced an innovation in the world of Tic Tac. They were creating layered flavors in a new line called Tic Tac Mixers and their first introductions would be Peach Lemonade and Cherry Cola. Because they’re beverages.

I wasn’t able to find the Cherry Cola but did see the Peach Lemonade at several locations and picked mine up at 7-11.

The press release described, “Peach Lemonade flavor Tic Tac Mixers: change from a peach flavor to the sweet flavor of lemonade.” But the reality is that peaches are sweet and lemonade is tangy.

If you’ve ever eaten a Yankee Candle Mango Peach Salsa Candle and thought, “That was unsatisfying.” You may find that this Tic Tac experience is preferable, but only slightly because this is actually meant to be eaten.

The initial flavor is definitely candle-like. It’s peachy in the most fragrant and least-food-like way. Unlike the candles, these don’t smell like anything in the package, the scent is only release in the mouth. The sweet peach layer gives way to a tangy layer that I think is supposed to be lemonade, but still has a strong peach note ... it’s tart and has a lot of zest but that combined with the lightly pine notes of the peach makes it all a bit caustic. The more I ate of these, the more my mouth burned like I might have been eating bits of lye.

The innovation of layering was definitely there, but I’ve always felt like Tic Tacs have a little layering to them. The standard peppermint has a bit of a fennel or anise on the outside and then peppermint inside. So doing a completely different flavor is cool ... but these are not the flavors I’m looking for. Strawberry Lemonade might be more up my alley.

I have to admit that the flavor did linger for a long time. I felt, for at least half an hour that I had “candle fresh breath.” That’s a thing.

Brach’s has reintroduced their whole line of chocolate panned candies over the past two years. They’ve redone their classic Bridge Mix and now have several varieties of chocolate covered nuts. One of the surprising new items is Brach’s Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Bites.

The gussetted, resealable bag holds a half of a pound. Like most other Brach’s products, the description on the package is only contained in the product name ... nothing else to go on except the very long ingredients list.

The image on the bag shows some chocolate pieces, and then a cross section of the actual candies ... sitting next to that is a rustic pretzel nugget and a little square of caramel. That is really not what the product is.

The little spheres are a great size, about the same size as a garbanzo bean or hazelnut. The milk chocolate coating is shiny and the bag had a nice sweet scent, a little on the milky side. The pieces have a good crunch, the pretzel center isn’t too hard or crumbly. The pretzel flavor was good, not too much of the washed crust that can get kind of bitter, and no big bits of salt. But upon eating the pieces, this is where the caramel part comes in. The caramel is actually little shards mixed into the milk chocolate. So at first it’s just a pretzel with some milk chocolate, but after chewing, the chocolate melts away and the starchy pretzel dissolves ... and what was left was some sort of tacky residue of hard caramel. It was weird and kind of waxy and unpleasant.

So, after a while I took to letting the milk chocolate melt away instead of crunching them up, but that was unsatisfying because then my pretzel would get mushy before the caramel bits were all gone. I’ve had other confections like almonds, that had a little toffee coating before the milk chocolate, I’m not sure why that wasn’t the process here.

I’ll pass on these in the future, which is too bad because it’s a unique selling proposition in the rather crowded field of morselized products.

Years ago, at my first visit to the All Candy Expo (now known as the Sweets & Snacks Expo), I was excited to see a candy called Gazillions. They were little boxes, probably sold for a quarter, that had tiny chewy candies in them, like mini Skittles but single flavors. They came in pineapple. And then I never saw them in stores.

Here it is, 8 years later and I finally found a package at Economy Candy. Except they’re called Cajillions. They’re billed as The Tiny Tasty Candies.

They’re rather like teensy, rustic bits of deep fried Starburst chews. They’re about the size of lentils.

I hesitate to say that they have an actual shell, but they’re definitely coated and sealed, so they don’t get sticky.

The strawberry flavor is rather clean. The outside is sweet and a little like cotton candy at first, but upon chewing the bits, it’s tangy and pretty smooth. They’re a lot like Skittles, except there’s something that’s not quite right about them. It might be the fact that they use apple juice, so there’s a little note to it that’s just a bit like apple peels to me. But perhaps a little metallic as well.

The shape is pretty good, they’re appealing to look at, though there was a bit of a yellow cast to mine, which made me wonder about whether they were fresh. They don’t roll around, but because they’re so small, they’re not easy to pick up with my fumbly fingers. About five makes a small taste, a dozen is a decent mouthful for a flavorful chew. I could see them working well in candy buffets, especially if they’re available in a wide array of colors and flavors.

I don’t have much interest in the other flavors, which are Blue Raspberry, Green Apple and Watermelon in addition to the Strawberry. No mixes, no Pineapple. I’ll pass for now.

I’m a big fan of Malted Milk Balls and consider the candy coated Pastel Malted Milk Egg to be one of the best holiday candy creations ever. Brach’s has been making a pastel egg for at least 55 years, and malted milk balls for even longer.

Though the Brach’s brand has been around for over 110 years, they’ve changed ownership, leadership and product focus dozens of times. This means that the products themselves also change. The changes can be for consumer-driven reasons, supply issues and costs. I’ve noticed, since Candy Blog is coming up on 10 years, that the Brach’s Fiesta Eggs have changed quite a bit over the years, and have some photos and notes to document it.

Name: Malted Milk Pastel Fiesta Eggs
Brand: Brach’s (Ferrara Candy)
Size: 7.5 ounces
Price: $2.50
Rating: 5 out of 10
Shell: Pastel. It’s crisp and has the texture of actual egg shells, a little bit of crumble, generally flavorless.
Chocolate: It’s passable stuff. It’s real chocolate, but not great quality. The texture is fatty and smooth, but also extremely sweet, there’s very little cocoa flavor to it.
Malted Milk Center: The texture is very dense, with a lot of milky notes but less malt than the others. It’s not overly sweet and not overtly salty.

The center this year is different. It’s darker in color, which does indicate that the recipe or manufacturing process has changed. The colors are great, I like the shell, though many commenters do not like the new version. I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong here, except that I don’t plan on buying them again, but I’ll finish the bags I have.

One of the problems with Pixy Stix, when it comes to offering them as party favors, gift decoration or as part of a candy buffet, is that you can only buy them in the assorted flavors. No one sells them in single flavor packages. Enter YumJunkie’s Sassy Straws. They come in twice the number of flavors, have really cute colors and designs on the straws what’s more, they can be ordered as separate flavor packages.

The design of the straws is attractive when seen as a bulk arrangement. It’s simple, just a repeated pattern of colored swirls. The straws don’t have any writing on them, or notations of their flavors.

I picked up a full set of flavors at the Fancy Food Show earlier this year.

There’s no secret recipe for these granulated candies, it’s the same thing that makes up SweeTARTS or Lik-M-Aid. It starts with granulated dextose, which is just glucose (the stuff in corn syrup). Dextrose isn’t quite as sweet as regular table sugar, so this formula take flavors really well without being overly cloying.

The flavors are actually pretty good. I’m not going to go through each one, but I can say for me the highlights were Strawberry, Grape (which is not quite Pixy Stix grape), and Orange. The dissolve is great, with a granulated start, cool feeling as it releases the flavor and a tangy note throughout. I didn’t like the Blueberry and found the Black Cherry and Cherry to taste exactly the same (which is just fine, it’s really about the straw colors, after all). I did wonder why there was no yellow (lemon, banana, pineapple, whatever).

Each straw is about 6 inches long. While the candy is 101 calories per ounce, there are only 8 calories per straw (only 2.25 grams of candy in there). It would take more than a dozen of these straws to make 100 calories.

Now, someone needs to convince Wrigley’s that they should sell Skittles in individual colors.

When I was very little, as far as I knew, Jelly Beans came in a scant few flavors and they were basically the same as Spice Drops. Later Jelly Belly came along and revolutionized jelly beans by trying to make everything into a flavor at least once.

Brach’s now calls their fruit blend of Jelly Bird Eggs their Classic Flavors, and they call what were, for about 100 years the classic flavors simply Spiced. I guess when a couple of generations grow up with fruity jelly beans, that happens. Now, I might complain that things have changed over the years, and a pound of coffee is no longer a pound of coffee ... but this bag is actually a pound of jelly beans. For only $2.49 ... not a bad deal overall ... if they’re any good.

Nowhere on the bag does it go beyond that name to describe what the flavors actually are. It appears there are six flavors.

I’ll start with Green which is epitome of a Spearmint jelly bean. It’s like a jelly bean version of Spearmint Leaves. The shell is grainy and far too sweet, but the center has a lot of fresh spearmint flavor, with little pops of extra flavor now and then. Very refreshing. I picked these out of the bag and ate them first.

Black is Licorice, which is not surprising to anyone who’s ever had jelly beans. The flavor is strongly anise, crisp and sweet but with a little bitter edge that I think may come from the artificial colors. I liked them, they were good but there were far fewer blacks than any other color in the bag.

White is Peppermint but a rather mild mint. As much as I like peppermint, it simply doesn’t go very well here. It’s weak and watery, kind of like a peppermint tea instead of a peppermint candy. Still, I didn’t avoid them and I enjoyed the fact that they didn’t have any colorings in them.

Orange is Orange Spice. I think it’s spiced orange, because it’s not Orange Slice orange, there’s a note of cinnamon and clove to the shell, but the center is orange. These irritated me, because I wanted a zesty Jelly Bird Egg equivalent of the Orange Slice. However, I applaud them for making an orange that was actually in keeping with the spice theme.

Pink is Wintergreen. I love wintergreen and these were pretty good, aromatic and medicinal but with a bitter finish.

Purple is Clove. I don’t care for clove as a candy flavor or spice, so I’ll pass on this one. It was strong and well rounded, with both aromatic notes and the bitterness that I’m never sure is coming from the flavorings or the colorings.

Red is Cinnamon. I like cinnamon a lot and I eat plenty of Hot Tamales. These were spicy and sweet, a good balance, especially since it seemed to come from the jelly center, not just the sugary shell.

On the whole, they’re an acceptable blend of flavors, just what I expected. I wish the sugar shell wasn’t quite so grainy and sweet, but the jelly center is actually rather smooth. The contain no pectin, they’re only jelled with corn starch.

The beans were made in Mexico. They have a beeswax and confectioners glaze on them, so most vegans would not eat these. Jelly Bird Eggs are made in a facility that also uses milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soy.

In preparation for the episode, I picked up the 99 Cent Only Store version of the popular Mars candy bar array. The cross sections are shown in the image above. They’re all packaged by Momentum Brands in Turkey. Though the wrappers said that they were milk chocolate covered candy bars, the milk chocolate actually contained dairy whey, which is considered a filler in the United States and cannot be labeled chocolate here. In general whey is used in place of extra sugar in cheaper milk chocolate. Think about it, if you want to make an inexpensive chocolate, you’re going to use as little of the most expensive ingredient as you can. So the cacao content (not even listed) is probably not more than 20%. Then there’s milk, which is usually milk fat and milk powder (which includes both the milk proteins and milk fats) ...and sugar. Too much sugar and the chocolate is unappealing and too much milk fat and the chocolate won’t set. So, milk protein does nicely as a filler that has a slightly malty flavor but is generally benign.

Choco Coco (Bounty) are like Almond Joy without the almonds. The coconut was very firm, but thankfully not that sweet. The milk chocolate has an odd malty flavor to it and a sort of “vitamin” note. Overall, satisfying for a cheap candy ... there were three little bars in the package for 60 cents.

Choco Duo (Twix) - This was a smaller package instead of the king size versions of the others. The sticks smelled malty and sweet. The biscuit base was very hard with a sort of graham cracker or digestive note to it, instead of the exceptionally bland version in the US Twix. The caramel was quite stiff but ultimately chewy ... much chewier than a Twix. The texture of the whole was more within my preferences than actual Twix. But it still isn’t in my arena of candy bars.

Coco Nut (Snickers) were also a king sized package that had two not-quite-full-sized bars. Mine were bloomed (all others were shiny) and I noticed right away that they’re much flatter than Snickers. The ratios are completely off and the peanuts taste foreign, as if they’re a different variety from the US bars. It’s not very peanutty, the caramel and nougat had the same chew ... it was fine for eating, but did not scratch the same itch that a fresh Snickers does.

Coco Nougat (Milky Way) is not at all like a Milky Way. This is actually more like the Milk Munch (also make in Turkey) that I had years ago. Very malty, a little too stiff and not fluffy enough.

I’ll stick to paying full boat for my Mars family of bars, especially when for a similar price, the 99 Cent Only Store sells those snack package with 6 or 8 little bars for a dollar anyway.

Valentine’s Day candy is disappointing because it’s usually about the packaging. So, I was pleased at Whole Foods when I spotted two limited edition varieties from Theo Chocolate for Valentine’s Day ... and on sale at 2 bars for $3 (they’re usually $4 each). I’ve often said that a fine chocolate bar is better than a greeting card and in this case, far cheaper. There’s even a “To” and “From” spot on the back of the bar. (But the ideal touch would be to include at least a personalized post it note.)

It’s called Theo Red Hot Cinnamon Love Crunch. The description on the back said: The red-hot crunch of cinnamon brittle in smooth, rich, 70% dark chocolate - spicy and sweet.

Sounds amazing: for $1.50, I was getting a unique bar that combined cinnamon and chocolate, that was also fair trade certified, non-GMO, organic, vegan, soy-free, Kosher and made here in the USA. Goodbye, ordinary candy in a heart shaped package! (The other bar I picked up was the milk chocolate My Cherry Baby.)

On the tongue at first it’s a little tangy. The melt is a little grainy, I wasn’t sure if it was the crunchy bits or not at first, but it seems that some of it is spices. It became apparent very quickly that this was not just a cinnamon and chocolate bar. My bad for not reading the label fully.

Here’s the deal: the package is pink, the printing on the back is brown. In full light and my reading glasses, I can read it. But not in the dim light and glassesless state I was in at Whole Foods. (My usual trick when I don’t have my glasses and the print is tiny is to take a photo with my phone and then blow it up, but I read the description and thought that was the extent of the flavors.)

I actually like spicy things (curry, cinnamon, black pepper and ginger), but the one I can’t do is red pepper. Capsascin is one of those compounds that people experience differently because of genetic differences. For me, cayenne isn’t fun, there’s a lot of heat that doesn’t seem to dissipate and in higher concentrations it just induces nausea. So, I avoid anything other than mild chili items. While there’s a proliferation of chili peppers in confection, and for the most part they’re tolerable, though not always enjoyable for me.

This was freakishly hot for me. I got the different sensations from the various spices, I could actually discern the difference between the black pepper and the cayenne and the cinnamon. (Clove actually has a bit of a numbing effect.) The cinnamon really only came in at the beginning as a scent. The tangy bite of the chocolate did help to mellow the pepper at first, but once it hit my throat, the one-two punch of black and red pepper was too much. The little brittle crunch pieces were supposed to be cinnamon, and maybe some of them were, but other larger bits seemed flavorless.

I tried this bar twice, eating only one of the large squares each time in small bits. The warming effect from the spices lasts a long time, well over a half an hour. Though it didn’t upset my stomach, it really didn’t please me either and I don’t plan on finishing the bar.

If your loved one is partial to the extremely spicy side of things, this might be a good option, especially if you’re looking for something without dairy or soy (the Lindt dark chocolate products contain milk and soy ingredients). The bar is made in a facility that also handles peanuts, wheat, milk, eggs and soy.

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